


Wild Geese

by Just_another_shipper



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Retirement, the man from uncle gift exchange 2019, well mostly hurt and a little comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21783967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_another_shipper/pseuds/Just_another_shipper
Summary: “Rest assured, gentlemen," Waverly said, "you’re not being retired because of anything in particular that has happened. Mr. Kuryakin is right, you are certainly our most successful team. But whatever the case may be, the fact is that you are all getting a bit long in the tooth for fieldwork, wouldn’t you say? I can’t help but think that if you all weren’t pushing fifty, Vienna wouldn’t have been quite as disastrous.”Or the gang has to retire. They take it about as well as you would think.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo/Gaby Teller
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33
Collections: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Winter Holiday Gift Exchange 2019





	Wild Geese

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tabacvie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacvie/gifts).



> This work is for TMFU Holiday Gift Exchange! I had a lot of fun writing it ~~(especially because it let me procrastinate on finals)~~ I filled this prompt for [tabacvie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacvie/pseuds/tabacvie) whose prompt was _Would love to see a Illya/Napoleon/Gaby old age retirement fic. Lots of Illya trying to pretend he is as strong and capable as he used to be and Napoleon being extra vain about his appearance. This can be fluff, angst, or action whatever your strong suit is! If you want to go dark go for it!_ I also tried to incorporate another of their prompts about Waverly training Gaby as his successor but idk how well I did that. Either way, this was a really exciting fic to write and I hope you like it :D
> 
> I have I have [a twitter](https://twitter.com/Just_Shipper98) [a tumblr](http://just-another-shipper.tumblr.com/) and [a pillowfort!](https://www.pillowfort.social/just-another-shipper) Feel free to find me on either of those sites if you want, though I am currently most active on twitter! 
> 
> A gentle reminder that likes and comments make writers very happy!

“I think Waverly’s going to take Illya out of the field soon.” 

Napoleon’s blue, inscrutable eyes glanced over at Illya, resting between him and Gaby. He made a derisive noise but didn’t otherwise answer. 

“What?” aksed Gaby, mindful of the sleeping giant between them, “You don’t think so?”

Napoleon tilted his head thoughtfully, avian and inquisitive. “I just don’t think that splitting up his best team is very wise, that’s all. Doesn’t seem like a good idea, team cohesion and all that.”

Privately, Gaby suspected that Waverly was planning on retiring their entire team, they had been given fewer missions in the last year and he kept giving Gaby work that would be better suited to someone in management, who couldn’t be on the ground because they had to be able to look at the whole picture. 

And then, the mission in Vienna. What a shitshow that had been. 

“Napoleon,” Gaby said softly, “I don’t think that he has any other choice after what happened last time.” 

Napoleon had very little to say to that. 

-

They were all getting older, not bouncing back from injuries like they could have ten years ago. Their kind of field work was a young person’s game and Illya–unsubtle, too honest Illya––who was most often their muscle, had suffered more than any of them. Not that he would ever admit it. Not to his partners, and  _ especially  _ not to Waverly. 

But he wasn’t the only one, Napoleon was in the midst of waging war against the ever-encroaching grey appearing in his hair and had begun going to the gym religiously ( _ unhealthily,  _ thought something in the back of Gaby’s brain when she saw him go). 

Even Gaby, who had joined the game much later and was a few year younger found herself growing tired of being in the field. Once Waverly had begun inviting her to help plan missions, her analytical, mechanic’s mind had latched on to the challenges of piecing together the big-picture plans that were needed in order for their field agents to even be sent out. More and more often, she felt like she could be doing so much more in an office with Waverly than running from yet another neo-nazi with dreams of world domination and a comically large gun. 

-

Waverly’s office was no stranger to tense conversations. It wasn’t even a stranger to tense conversations between Gaby’s team and Waverly (like the aftermath of the Marrakesh Affair, for instance). However, the office has never been this tense and Gaby didn’t know how to break it, mainly because she agreed with him. 

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” said Waverly, voice as smooth and British and cold as it always was, “but I’m afraid that I’m retiring your team.” 

“Why?” Illya snapped, his accent coming out thicker than it had in years, “Because of what happened in Vienna? That could have happened to anyone. We are still your most successful team, we have–”

Napoleon cut him off with a soft hand on his arm, which was, Gaby noted with a strange sense of detachment, shaking like it had when they first met. “What our Russian friend means to say is that this seems to be coming out of nowhere. True, we may be in a bit of a rough patch right now, but it seems hasty to just throw us away.”

Napoleon had turned up his usual charm, but it fell flat in the face of Waverly’s resolute, genial mask. 

“Rest assured, gentlemen, you’re not being retired because of anything in particular that has happened, Mr. Kuryakin is right, you are certainly our most successful team. But whatever the case may be, the fact is that you are all getting a bit long in the tooth for fieldwork, wouldn’t you say? I can’t help but think that if you all weren’t pushing fifty, Vienna wouldn’t have been quite as disastrous, wouldn’t you say?”

Napoleon actually took a step back, as if Waverly had physically assaulted him rather than just telling him a truth that he would rather not hear. 

“Of course,” Waverly continued, “we aren’t about to hang you all out to dry! If you wish it, we already have jobs lined up training future agents. Of course, while it may be a nice thing for our best field agents to train our up-and-comers, the choice, as always, it up to you, Mr. Kuryakin, Mr. Solo.” 

Neither of her boys said anything, Gaby swore that she would have been able to cut the silence with a knife. 

“Well,” Waverly said, “if that’s all, please close the door on your way out, and Ms. Teller, please don’t forget about our meeting tomorrow about the situation in the Balkans.” 

Gaby nodded before herding her two boys out of the room, both of them too shocked to keep her from dong so. 

-

They kept it together on the way out of headquarters, but as soon as the door to their house clicked firmly shut, the little coffee table in the living room was whirling through the air and the wall that it had been resting on had a new, fist sized hole in it. 

Gaby and Napoleon, after over a decade of experience with Illya, wisely remained by the door and let him work out some of his all consuming rage out on the furniture. It wasn’t until Illya started to look like he was about to cause some serious harm to the Renoir that Napoleon would neither confirm nor deny was pilfered property that Gaby watched Napoleon walk up to him, footsteps deliberately loud on the crushed glass and hardwood floor. 

“Peril,” Napoleon said, hand a gentle touch on a broad shoulder, “as much as I would love to just let you take out your anger on our furniture, maybe rein yourself in before you destroy something that may or may not have belonged to royalty.” 

Illya, still shaking minutely under his hand, closed his eyes and said, accent thick in his mouth, “I  _ knew _ faberge egg was stolen.” 

Napoleon chuckled softly, his hand starting to stroke a path up and down Illya’s arm, “No, that one really is a souvenir, the desk however–well, a lady never kisses and tells.”

Illya let out an explosion of air that could have been a laugh if he wasn’t coming down from one of the more destructive rages of the past five years. “It’s a good thing that you are no lady, Cowboy.” 

“So you say, Peril. I know of a few former marks who may beg to differ,” Napoleon said, eyes dancing with mirth unsuited for the destruction surrounding them (or so Gaby thought), “have you calmed down? Because I think this is a conversation that we all need to be present for and I don’t think this room can take much more.”

Gaby watched as Illya took a large, deliberate breath before letting it out, and with it, the last of the tension in his shoulders, slumping against Napoleon and nodding. “да, Cowboy.”

Gaby took a shaky breath and clapped her hands, “All right, boys, shall we go to the kitchen. I don’t think that this is a talk we can have on an empty stomach.” 

-

They all three were silent as they ate dinner, none of them having an appetite, but they were too well trained to pass up food if it was in front of them. You never knew what meal would be your last, a lesson they had learned well in Belarus. 

After the plates were piled up in the sink, Illya finally spoke, emotion thickening his accent noticeably, “I have been spy since I was young man. I don’t,” he trailed off for a moment, choked with emotion, “I don’t know who I even am if I am not.” 

“Oh, Illya,” Gaby breathed out, almost involuntarily. But when she tried to come up with anything else to say, her mind was blank. So instead of saying anything, she wrapped an arm around one of the men who was her husband in all but name and held him as he shook apart against her. 

She glanced at Napoleon, hoping to share a sympathetic glance, but instead, the eyes that look back were shrewd and considering. Gaby couldn’t help but think that his glance didn’t bode well, but she only had the capacity to deal with one emotional break down per night and so she focused on helping the man in her arms first. 

-

In retrospect, Illya’s reaction to retirement was easy, comparatively. After the night of the broken furniture (as Gaby had taken to referring to it as in her head), he had thrown himself into training new recruits for UNCLE, and he was even talking about looking into taking physics classes at the local university now that they had a very steady schedule. 

Napoleon was in someways finding it much harder to transition. Not that he would let anyone in. It seemed to Gaby that almost every time she came home, there was some new curiosity that he had acquired through less than legal means on display somewhere in the house, as if daring one of his lovers to call him on it. 

It came to a head when Gaby walked through the door and found The Lady of Shalott hanging where the Renior had been.    
  
Gaby’s blood began heating. “Napoleon Solo! Why is there a painting from the Tate in our living room?” 

Napoleon slinked through the door, the gray hair at his temple freshly covered with hair dye and the most innocent expression he could hope to muster painted on his face. “Do you like it, darling? I feel like it gives this room a touch of whimsy, don’t you?” 

Gaby whirled to face him head on, “Listen,” she hissed, “I know that retirement has been hard, it’s been hard on all of us, but we had an agreement, Solo. We let you steal whatever you want as long as it’s not from where we live.” 

Napoleon reeled back as if he’d been struck, “Yeah,” he said, “retirement’s been hard on me, it’s been hard on Illya too, but you know who it hasn’t seemed to affect much? You, Gaby. Because you  _ knew _ and rather than tell your partners, you let us walk into that meeting without any warning all so you could keep on Waverly’s good side.” 

Gaby felt like an icy hand hand grasped her heart and was squeezing, but she didn’t say anything, couldn’t refute it. 

“Did you think that we wouldn’t figure it out?” Napoleon continued, “While we’ve been sitting on our hands, trying to figure out how to live after our boss fired us because we had gotten  _ too old _ , you’ve been busier than ever. So maybe I’m not super concerned about where I’m getting my art from these days since my goddamned  _ wife _ is co-leader of the most powerful spy agency in the world!” 

Gaby heard a gasp and saw Illya passed Napoleon’s shoulder. She sighed. Her shoulders slumped. She said, “You’re right, I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected. Our missions were getting shorter and the work Waverly was giving me when we were home was far above my paygrade. I should have said something, or at least warned you. I’m sorry, Napoleon,” she locked eyes with Illya, “I’m sorry to you too, Illya. But it wasn’t like he was wrong, was he? We were all getting tired of the field, it was obvious, but I was the only one who would admit it and maybe I should have talked to you first, but you had both been shutting me out for  _ months _ before we were retired! I’m sorry it hurt both of you, but this was the right decision and I stand by it.” 

She squared up her shoulders and forced herself to look at them, trying desperately to project both resoluteness and sympathy and the same time (she didn’t think she quite nailed it, Napoleon was their actor, not her). But she found she couldn’t read either of them in this moment–Napoleon, whose cool exterior hid a startling neediness and insecurity, and Illya, whose every emotion was always written plainly on his face–and that frightened her far more than anything that she had seen in the field. 

Napoleon sighed, the tension he had been carrying in his frame dropping away and he closed his eyes, defeated. Illya, behind him, had crept closer and wrapped an arm around his waist, supporting him. Gaby ached to do the same, but, terrifyingly, she wasn’t sure of her welcome. 

“I don’t,” Napoleon started, “I don’t think that I can forgive this yet, but I’m tired of holding on to this anger. It’s been eating me up inside,” he held out his arms, “can you come over here, please?” 

And there was nothing that Gaby could do but fill the empty space between his arms. 

-

-

-

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

-Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify, I think that for certain spies, you could continue as a field agent long past fifty, I just think that our gang's particular brand is very physically intensive and that type of thing catches up with you eventually. 
> 
> Also this somehow is the second fic I've written this month about someone having to retire before they're ready lmao


End file.
